Through a Glass, Darkly
by blinkblink
Summary: One man's reality is another man's dream. But Snake's never had time for pithy philosophising. Slash, SnakexOtacon. Does not and will not contain MGS4 spoilers. Final chapter up.
1. Prologue

Dave woke knowing something was wrong

A note mostly unrelated to this fic: With MGS4's release date almost upon us, I'll just say a quick word about my spoiler policy, for any interested: I have absolutely no intention of spoiling anyone. I know PS3s are thin on the ground (don't have one myself ), and recognise that as such a large part of the fandom won't get to play the game immediately, possibly for several months. I almost certainly will end up writing fics with MGS4 content, but rest assured they will be clearly marked. This applies to _any _details regarding MGS4, including concepts and information released in trailers. This fic has no MGS4 content.

(I would ask reviewers to be conscious of spoilers, especially in spoil-free fic, although I doubt many people read the reviews page. If you're concerned about spoiling _me_, I would ask that you say nothing about anything until the release date (I cut myself off from all MGS4 information, including trailers, some six months ago) but after that I'll be locking myself away from the internet and playing through on the weekend and so will be immune. Thank you. And, indeed, I might take this opportunity to say thank you to those who take the time to leave reviews. I really do appreciate them, and I love that the MGS community is small enough that I can now recognize familiar faces. I always look forward to reading your comments!)

--

Dave woke knowing something was wrong. He knew it before he opened his eyes, before his mind had catalogued all available nearby weapons, before he was even truly awake. It was a cold dusty feeling, like walking through a room full of ice crystals and feeling them land on his skin. The air was thick with the smell of coffee, and the bed was empty. Which meant that Hal was making coffee, which meant that Hal had gotten up _before him_. This only ever happened when he was out of commission, or Hal had not gone to bed at all. Neither of these was the case.

He rolled over and glanced at the bright red digits on the radio-clock next to the bed. 6:14. Dave wouldn't have gotten up for another fifteen minutes. The sun wouldn't be up for another two hours. The engineer shouldn't have been up for another four. Dave sighed and rolled right out of bed, slipping easily out of the warm bedding and landing solidly on the cool wooden floor. He picked up a pair of jeans on his way out of the bedroom.

Hal was, as expected, setting a pair of mugs down on their heavily stained kitchen table when Dave ghosted in, running a hand through his thick crop of hair. The engineer smiled at him vaguely as he sat down in his chair, wrapped his long fingers around the mug in front of him. Dave pulled his own chair out with an ankle and slipped into it, stared down at his drink. The dark coffee was swirling slowly, a thin trail of foam circling around towards the middle, a tiny brown-scale galaxy.

"You're up early," he noted carefully.

Hal shrugged and took a sip of his coffee. His gray eyes were lowered to stare at the table, partially hidden under dark lashes, the moon behind stormy clouds. "I couldn't sleep. And I figured, since you'd be getting up soon anyway, I might as well make some coffee."

Dave nodded, as if the engineer's statement made sense, coming as it was from a man who had by his own volition probably only seen the sunrise twice in his life, and took a deep swig from his mug, made a slight face even as he swallowed. His tongue tingled. "How much sugar did you put in this?"

"I- uh, a spoon and a half?"

"You know I only take half." It had taken the engineer two years of niggling to nudge him away from black coffee, and even then he hadn't made it very far.

"Huh? Oh, sorry, I can- I'll get some more…" Hal put down his cup, made to stand.

"No, it's fine. Don't bother." He took another deep sip to calm the engineer, watched his partner stare into his coffee, trace the rim of his mug absently with a thumb.

"Are you okay?" Dave put down his empty mug, and Hal started like a rabbit at the low thump.

"What? Yes, yeah, I'm fine. Just kind of worked up. You know, all the hacking I've been doing, and Mei Ling's been asking me to look into some stuff for her, and just yesterday Jack emailed and-"

"Hal." Dave cut his rambling off with a single word, waited for the engineer to look at him, gray eyes unusually dark in the kitchen's poor lighting. His skin seemed darker than usual as well, as if suffering from underexposure. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

Hal blinked, eyes sharpening for an instant, before he shook his head. "It's nothing. I just- I missed you." He smiled widely, eyes closed. The ice crystals hardened to pinpricks, the hair on the back of Dave's neck rising. The smile was false and pained, a mask tacked over his face to cover a deep hurt.

Dave reached out for the engineer's wrist, hand bright against the table's darker surface. "Are you sure…" he closed his fingers on empty air, where his eyes told him the engineer's wrist should have been. He stared, ignoring the low thrumming in his ears.

"Dave?"

Dave looked up at the engineer and the world swayed, darkening shades bleeding into each other, oily shadows consuming one another hungrily.

"Dave, are you okay?"

He watched Hal stand, tried to do the same and caught his ankle on the chair; he had forgotten to unwrap it. Hal's face blurred and the table tipped abruptly, and then he was staring up at the engineer, hands suddenly resting on rough linoleum. Dave could see Hal's mouth moving, but nothing was getting through the cotton wool in his ears. He reached for Hal's face, and found only darkness.


	2. Chapter 1

Dave woke knowing something was wrong, without knowing why

Dave woke knowing something was wrong, without knowing why. His head was a hot nest of pain; the entire back of his skull ached, his temples throbbed, and his heartbeat pounded in his ears like waves against a breakwater. He opened his eyes, and saw nothing but white. And, looking down, found what was wrong. He was lying in a padded room, swaddled tight in a straightjacket.

There was a second of shock, the bewilderment of a tiger escaped from its cage to find itself in completely unfamiliar surroundings, an instant of stunned confusion rooted in the fact that he wasn't where he should have been. Then years of training ingrained deep enough to be almost instinct slammed down like steel bars and trapped the tiger away before it could cause him to do something stupid.

Caught in a badly compromised situation, he switched gears from Dave to Snake, burying any personal information deep under frosty ground where it couldn't slip out accidentally. Even in the most domestic situation imaginable the soldier's physical instincts were always present, a swift-running river under a thin layer of ice, ready to shatter the ice and flood out when needed. But he would also automatically answer questions which would be fatal here, where even a suggestive pause after a query showed an exploitable weakness. Snake was a filter, a one-way mirror, letting information in but not out, letting questions out but not in. And, when he needed it, Snake was a good mindset for blocking out painful thoughts and memories, able to crush them down into sharp jagged husks to tear at him later when danger was less imminent. It always hurt afterwards, soft emotional coal compressed under extreme pressure over time as he ignored it, producing diamond shards to better slice into him. But, most importantly, it was survivable. Mistakes were not. With only a flicker of his eyes he turned his mind in that direction now, away from the past, from his expectations, from his fear, and focused entirely on the now.

The soldier expended a few energetic seconds testing the jacket, only to find that it had been secured professionally, tightening across his chest and back with every move he made, hands trapped efficiently under the opposite elbow. His bare ankles, peeking out from under a too-short pair of white cotton pants, had been fastened together by medical restraints, stiff leather handcuffs designed to provide maximum strength with minimum potential for harm.

He pressed his face into the stiff white pad under him, rolled his cheek across it to get a better idea of it. At least three inches thick, the padding was hard and rough with no slack material or creases. He would never be able to tear through it with his teeth, and even if he did there was unlikely to be any useful reason to do so. He discarded the floor as unimportant.

Doing his best not to pull any further on the jacket, Snake rolled to his knees. The sharp lines of corners and padded edges rippled and blurred as if a hand had passed through the clear pool of his vision. He felt over-heated and slightly sick, an uncomfortable slithering sensation curling in his stomach. It took nearly a minute for his vision to clear, and it remained foggy at the very edges. The assumption of drugs was reconfirmed.

In an awkward shuffling movement he crossed the room to the door, indicated only by appropriately-sized seams in the white padding. Shoulder against the wall he pushed himself up into a standing position, the stiff material of the jacket rubbing against the padding with a sound like fabric tearing. He balanced carefully on his too-close feet and tried to slip his right hand, covered in the jacket's rough sail-like material, through the gaps in the padding to the door. There was not enough give in the jacket, and he was able only to brush the tip of his middle finger against the hard, smooth surface. There was no chance of opening the door from the inside, not without removing the padding.

Stalled for the minute, he hopped stiffly across the room to the corner of the far wall and stood there, taking a measure of the situation. The room was ten feet by ten feet by eight feet, padding at least three inches thick, with no windows and no accessible ventilation, giving no hint as to the nature of the larger facility. There was no perceptible scent in the air. There was a video camera perched in the back right corner, which he was currently standing under, most likely recording both audio and visual information. He had as resources only the clothes on his back. Both his mobility and freedom of movement were severely restricted. He had been drugged, although the drugs seemed mostly to have moved through his system, and he was fairly confident at this point that there would be no lasting effects. Fine. He filled his check-list out cleanly, sharp ticks and marks on the pale parchment of his mind. He had established what needed to be established. The cold structured world of necessity Snake could temporarily provide him twisted and melted away like a spring thaw, and the crowded, confused maze of questions and fears flooded back in an icy rush bringing with it a cold painful ache behind his forehead.

Hal… had drugged him. That much was clear. Either the sugar in the coffee had been to further disguise the taste of the sedative, or the sedative itself had had a saccharine favour. His partner's peculiar behaviour was at least accounted for, if not actually explained. He hadn't noticed any sign of outside intrusion into the apartment, knew no one could have come in while he had been home, and highly doubted anyone had entered while he had not been present and remained in the apartment unnoticed by him. Whatever threat had been used to force Hal to drug him, it had not been that of immediate physical harm. A thought which was based, of course, on an assumption. His instincts told him to trust no one, not even his partner. He had no reason to believe Hal had been coerced into doing this. But he could not believe that the engineer would betray him of his own free will. Instinct warred with reason and emotion, and lost.

Snake was confident in himself. It was why he was still alive. Equally, he held confidence in very few others; another reason he was still alive. Mistrusting others was second nature to him; it cost him no mental anguish, since he was usually proved right. But now he was edging himself over a deep chasm on a very thin plank, trusting against instinct, against evidence, and that was almost as terrifying an idea as being proved wrong. He always distrusted; being proved wrong was infinitely less painful that way, and changing habits at a time like this made him tense and anxious.

His thoughts were interrupted by a quiet electronic beeping outside the door, and Snake immediately boxed them away and dropped them into storage, freed his mind and sharpened his senses, already teetering on a knife-thin edge. The door opened.

The man who entered occupied that gray zone between young and middle aged, most likely in his early forties. He wore a suit and a lab coat and held a yellow laminated folder under his arm. He was the stereotypical doctor, dark hair carefully trimmed and gelled back, black-rimmed glasses perched on a short, slightly too-flat nose, long face moulded into a friendly expression, breast pocket carrying several pens. Only the stethoscope around the neck was missing from the image. He exuded a sense of calm competence, and safety. Snake was immediately suspicious.

"Ah, you're awake," he said, smiling warmly, the kind of smile that could be flipped off and on like a light. Snake met his expression with one of stony indifference, watched the door behind him close and click as it locked. Spring-operated, automatic locking. "How are you feeling? There may be a slight headache; it should pass in a few hours. I'm afraid very few medications have truly no side-effects."

"Who the hell are you?"

The doctor's eyes darkened slightly, smile slipping a fraction. "You don't remember me?"

"I've never met you before." A hint of gravel crept into his voice.

The doctor opened his folder and, pulling a pen from his ample supply, made a quick fluid note before returning the pen to his pocket and closing the folder. He looked back to Snake with what the soldier interpreted as an apologetic face. "We knew this was a possibility, although I didn't really expect-"

"Cut the crap. Who are you?"

"My name is Slatt. Michael Slatt. I've been your doctor for the past five years."

Snake's eyes narrowed to a slit. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You've been residing here for quite some time-"

"Where is here?"

Slatt sighed, and relaxed into a more comfortable position, apparently foreseeing a long stay. "'Here' is the Northshore Institute for Psychiatric Care and-"

"It's a nuthouse," said Snake flatly.

"A more positive approach is generally preferred," suggested Slatt gently.

"Euphemise all you want, doc. Where are we?"

"Ah," Slatt's expression darkened again, slightly, with disappointment.

"Where geographically," Snake specified flatly.

"Ah," said Slatt again, this time with relief. "Some 30 miles outside downtown Baltimore," he answered.

"Right. Now-"

"David, I really must ask you a few questions."

Snake's expression, which had been clearing to this point, slammed back into stony non-expression as the hairs on the back of his neck raised with a cold pricking sensation. His muscles tensed and he straightened, fingers clenching against the sudden overwhelming need to snap the man's neck. "Where did you hear that?" His voice was cold and flat as steel.

"What?" Slatt, sensing the change, tensed slightly.

"'David,'" snarled Snake, teeth aching as he snapped them shut against the instinct to sink them in the man's throat.

"That's your name. David Sears."

"That is not my name," said Snake immediately, instinctively, eyes darkening. Head clouded with drugs, his instincts were slipping through restraining fingers, flooding his mind with a thick need to protect himself, protect his name, protect what was his. Slatt was coming into sharper focus, lines standing out like mountains on a clear day so that every speck of dirt on his white coat, every thread on his suit, the thin writing on his pens suddenly all stood out in fierce relief. The white room blurred in the background, unimportant. His eyes were narrowing while his pupils dilated to sharpen his vision even further, ears pricking almost painfully to catch every sound Slatt made, every heavy breath, every tiny rustle. His lips parted slightly, tongue pressed against his teeth, while his nose strained for scent. With no weapon in hand he became one himself, shifting into a predator, backed dangerously into a corner.

"Well, maybe we can-"

"Look, we all know where this is going," broke in Snake, leading forcefully away from the issue, trying to assert his thoughts, his control. Now was not the time to be forced to leap. "Interrogation, torture, whatever." He paused for a split second, watched for any sign, any flicker of change in Slatt's eyes. And saw none.

"David, I assure you, no one here is going to-"

His name was a red flag, a running target, blood in the water, and he tensed further, hard and strong as a whip. He could feel himself sweating, hot stinging drips running down his back and his chest, forehead and temples. His stomach clenched, something inside twisting like a snake. The soldier's vision blurred for an instant, then resolved with less focus than before, spinning slightly. Slatt took a step closer and he drew his head back, fought to keep his lips from twisting up over his teeth. His instincts were tearing him in half, telling him to fight, to throw himself into the man and tear out his throat, to crush it to a wet pulp under his bare feet, to snap his neck; while his mind told him to protect himself, his name, what was his, that he was sick and drugged and couldn't fight. He was trying to find purchase on an icy slope, grasping desperately with torn fingers at the ground as it slid out from under him. He wanted to kill, to vomit, to escape, to pass out, to fight, to protect. He didn't catch the rest of Slatt's sentence; heard the tones but not the words.

Snake looked up, sweat running into his eyes, panting slightly. He was backed as far as he could go into the corner, spine pressed up flush against the padding. His thoughts were running in a deep current through frozen hands and he could only catch hold of the roughest ideas. His presence, his name meant Hal was involved, Hal was tied in, and Hal was something to fight for, to protect. Hal was his. "Where's Hal?" he snarled, low and rough. It was ambiguous enough to be fury or fear, left doors open for whichever approach was best, but he wasn't concerning himself with those thoughts.

"David, I-"

The name again, cutting into him like a whip, pushing him back further, prompting him to further imprudence. "Where is he? Next door, the same routine? Did you let him go; that the deal?" The words tumbled out through sharp teeth and thin lips in short simple groups.

"I'm afraid I don't know who-"

"Hal; Hal Emmerich. 5'10", dark hair, gray eyes, glasses, trips over his own feet? Sounding familiar?" Snake watched with bright snake eyes as the doctor's face lost its smile, mouth tightening instead into a frown. The man sighed.

"I had hoped that with medication this would have been taken care of," said Slatt, opening his folder to make another note. Snake fought not to startle at the sudden flash of colour in his slowly blurring vision.

"The hell game are you playing?"

The doctor closed his file. "There is no Hal Emmerich. There never has been."

The need to fight, to escape, was pouring into him, boiling his blood. "I had coffee with him this morning," said Snake fiercely, twisting at his ankle restraints to give as much space between his feet as possible, bracing his elbows out. "He put something in it; I woke up here."

"David, you haven't had caffeine since you were 23."

With the words a sudden cold came over him, the Alaskan wind freezing skin and icing his bones, a kind of frigid clarity before the plunge.

"If you think locking me up in a padded room and a white jacket's going to convince me I'm crazy, you son of a bitch, you've got another thing coming." He finished with a snap of his teeth, aching for blood. Hunching his shoulders, he threw himself forward into the centre of the room at the doctor, twisting as he fell to strike with his shoulder and elbow. The doctor sidestepped hurriedly, dropping his file. Snake, unable to regain balance, fell to the floor heavily, room spinning. He was flipping himself up again in an instant, twisting to give himself momentum, eyes closed to keep his swimming vision from distracting him. But when he cracked his eyes open again the doctor wasn't where he had been, and as he jerked around to find him, his ears told him the doctor was already behind him even as something pricked into his neck. The room went dark before he hit the ground.

--

Dave woke with a dull ringing in his ears, like the sound of a car idling several yards away. There was no point to being aware that something was wrong anymore. It was a waste of energy. There was no need for immediate protective action upon waking, and so his subconscious didn't bother waking him with a wasteful adrenaline rush.

He was still in his solitary cell, almost certainly the same one. His headache was mostly gone and he no longer felt sick. Instead, he felt strangely disconnected, his senses dulled. They had replaced one drug with another. The soldier jerked once at the straight jacket, found it secure, and then lay still, staring dully at the wall. The thick white cloth, closer to sailing canvas than clothing material, was lightly spotted and stained in places. The only traces left by other long-gone inhabitants, once locked in here like him to throw themselves uselessly against the walls.

His thoughts were slow, the frantic boiling need of earlier drained away to leave him cool and empty; a cracked desert floor at night. But they were more ordered, not driven by the teeth and claws of instinct.

The idea that Hal had betrayed _him_ to these people, he could understand. He wasn't simple enough to think that there was nothing the engineer valued over his life. He could imagine Hal giving up his partner to save a building full of kids, or to stop a town being nuked, or even to save Dave's life. But to betray his _name_. That cut deep, cut to his heart, cut _through_ his heart and left him feeling cold and empty in one respect, and at the same time angry as hell.

He found himself wondering what other secrets Hal had betrayed. The nature of their relationship? The power the engineer held over him? Not the cold faceless knowledge of Campbell and all his previous commanders, that they could point Snake and pull the trigger, and he would do what they told him to. The darker, closer knowledge that Dave would do damn well near anything for him, would go anywhere to find him, didn't need to offer to do useless things like split the stars or catch the moon because he was Snake and what he could offer was infinitely more dangerous. It hardly mattered. Those were things that, even if they weren't known, could be guessed. They were not betrayals he would not accept, would not gnaw him from the inside, a parasite slowly eating away his innards until he died. There was so little Dave had left, had ever had, that he would not ever give up. His name was quite possibly unique, a lone flower in a wasteland. And now it had been torn up and bartered away. He set his teeth and closed his eyes.

The door beeped again, and he raised his head, glanced over. Medication time, probably, since the drugs were wearing off; lucid thoughts were his only guideline. As the door opened he had a glimpse of two beefy orderlies standing on either side; a pair of bulky Chinese Fu dogs. The same doctor, if that was what he was, stepped through into the room, alone. He was holding his folder, a square of light against his black and white chest. The door clicked shut.

Slatt walked over to stand two feet in front of him, staring down. Teeth gritted, Dave pulled himself up into a sitting position, resting against the wall behind him. The world spun gently before slowing to a stop.

"How are you feeling, David?"

Expectation, and his now more rational thoughts, told the rest of him it was foolish and revealing to pick a fight over a name, so he didn't. Instead, he fell back partially into his mission-persona, into the cold emotionless wilderness that was Snake. He said nothing, merely watched, kept his eyes sharp and hard, kept his expression and posture dangerous.

"I was hoping we could talk some more," said Slatt, shifting to the side slightly and then, slowly, sitting down. Snake noted the weakness of the position without conscious thought.

"About what?" Snake watched his motions, watched the way his coat folded around him, watched for any odd twisting in his belt, anything that would betray the presence of a weapon. He saw nothing suspicious, although he mistrusted his eyes.

"Your past," said the doctor. Snake smiled slightly, eyes just as cold as before. Finally they were getting to the point.

"You want me to tell you about my past," Snake said, pulling his lips back just a fraction higher than necessary, maintaining the smile, teeth glinting. He had no tools now other than whatever predatory fear he could evoke, and he used it to its fullest. Yesterday, he had been a rabid dog. Today, he would be a snake, cold, rational and dangerous.

"I would like that, yes." Useless politeness, trying to make friends, to instil trust. Snake trusted no one. Not now.

"Screw off." He watched for irritation, and saw only disappointment.

"I had hoped," said the doctor, "that we might start off fresh. A new beginning."

"But you want me to tell you about my past," said Snake flatly.

"I would, yes. Purely to see what affects, if any, the new medication regime has had on your long-term memory. But if you don't want to talk about it, I can tell it to you, and you can correct me. You have quite an extensive file." He nodded to the yellow file folder on the floor next to him.

"You're going to tell me my life story?" Snake asked, sceptically.

"Yes, if you like. Be sure to stop me if I make a mistake."

"Yeah. Sure." Snake sat back, giving the appearance of relaxing, while keeping his muscles partially taut, feet drawn up ready to bolt.

"You were born August 2nd, 1972 in a small city in Wisconsin. Your mother was a secretary, your father was a sergeant in the US Army. Your family moving often, both within the US and internationally, with his frequent postings. Your mother ran away with another man when you were seven. When you were 14, you began to exhibit signs of a psychological issue, complaining of visual and auditory stimulus which no one else heard or saw. You were put on medication. When you were 16, you broke a classmate's arm, claiming he was trying to kill you. You were institutionalized for a short term, diagnosed with Schizophrenia, and given a new regime of medication. Your hallucinations grew more severe, and you began lashing out at others, especially your brothers."

"Let me guess. We were triplets?" Snake, whose eyes had narrowed slightly at the year, relaxed again, enough to let some sarcasm stream out. Slatt was unaffected.

"No. Your older brother, James, is two years older than you, your brother George three years younger. They featured prominently in your delusions, as did your father, revealing some deep-set issues. The delusions grew more frequent over the passing months.

"You developed an imaginary world for yourself, based partially on your own life in the form of sometimes paranoid, always extensive, delusions. To escape your mother's abandonment, you created the fiction of cloning, maintaining that you had no mother and were simply a copy of your father, as were your brothers. Your experience in a military lifestyle lead to a similarly military lifestyle in this world, where you were an exceptional soldier, an expert at all forms of combat and infiltration. Your resentment with your father, though, for not keeping your mother and forcing you to live the restrictive lifestyle of a military child, led to your pitting him against yourself as an enemy. An enemy you finally killed with a brilliant showing of intelligence and ingenuity, which you were often criticised for lacking.

"Your brothers showed up in your delusions as well, as murderous enemies like your father. Your older brother, whose superiority you resented, became a rival with a burning inferiority complex. Your younger brother, who was intellectually extremely gifted, became a manipulative evil genius who you bested in your fantasies as you never could have in real life."

"Of course. Why bother trying to beat them in math when I could create my own world and destroy them there." Snake watched him coolly. The man was glancing at his notes every now and then, but he knew the material by heart.

"By this time, your delusions were so frequent, and so indistinguishable to you from the real world, that you were committed to an institute, this institute. This was when you were 17, and only beginning to create the world I've just described."

"And I've been here ever since," said Snake flatly

"Yes. Under the care of several different doctors, and on dozens of different medication regimes. Nine days ago you began an entirely new drug, Benthydone, brand-new to the market. In the past, changing your meds has sometimes resulted in violent periods, so we moved you here from your room for the adjustment period."

Snake shrugged slightly, a smooth, lithe movement. "I told you before: a padded room and jacket, and some bullshit story's not going to convince me I'm crazy." He paused, watched as Slatt frowned and scribbled in his folder. Now that he was higher than it, Snake could see half a page full of writing on top of a thick folder-full of paper held together with staples and paperclips. "Write all you want. Two days ago, I was drinking coffee in my kitchen, and nothing-"

"Two days ago," interrupted Slatt, looking up, dark eyes showing strength beyond the effort at calm, "you were here, in this room. Two weeks ago, you were in your room in this institute. Two years ago, you were in your room in this institute. Twenty years ago, David, you were here, in your room, in this institute."

Snake shifted, eyes narrowing. "Cut the crap. I know-"

"You know what your mind tells you. Unfortunately, it's not the same as reality." Slatt reached into his breast pocket, past the pens, and pulled out a small black case. He snapped it open, and Snake pulled back. Inside, though, was a simple mirror, surface slightly tarnished and dusty. Slatt held it up to his face, and Snake stared at his eyes starting back at him.

"What? The fact that my hair needs combing is supposed to convince me that…" Snake trailed off as Slatt angled the mirror slightly lower. He saw, as he had not noticed before, that his chin was covered in a thick growth of stubble, working its way up to a beard. Certainly more than a week's worth of missed shaves. "So you kept me under for a few days," he said easily, shrugging. "Is that all you've got?" His eyes glinted.

Slatt sighed and stood. Leaving the folder behind, he turned and walked over to the door, turning back to watch Snake as he slipped his hand through the padding to tap on the metal. Snake filed the system away as clumsy, and wondered whether the room was completely soundproof. The door was opened immediately, the two orderlies Snake had seen earlier slipping into the room. They were both taller and heavier than him, and moved with the ease of men confident in their abilities. With his hands loose, he probably could have taken them. With them tied, and drugs in his system, he had little chance. Nevertheless he pushed himself to his feet against the wall, biting his tongue against the dizziness, using the pain as a centre.

"They're just here to make sure no one gets hurt, David," said Slatt calmly. The two men walked past him to stand at Snake's shoulders, watching him with their full attention. They were both half a head taller than him, their proximity sending sharp ripples of warning down his spine.

"Finally getting down to it, huh?" he said, eyes focused firmly on Slatt, cool and unflappable. The doctor, holding the mirror still in one hand, stepped forward and, as Snake watched with sharp eyes, muscles tense, reached out and undid the belts strapping the jacket down between his legs. They fell loose, knocking against his knees, and the doctor grabbed the bottom of the jacket and forced it up. As he did so, he clicked open the mirror again and held it, angled, in front of Snake's stomach.

"We've had this problem before, David. You've told me, and my predecessors, that you were stabbed in the stomach on one of your missions, that you almost died. What do you see?"

Snake glanced down at the mirror without lowering his head. And then he did, regarding the image in the mirror more closely. The skin of his stomach, aside from being several shades too pale, was also smooth and whole. Where there should have been several scars, one leaving raised skin and discolouration, there was only smoothness and uniformity. His eyes flickered back to Slatt, watching him calmly, and then he bent his head fully to look at his stomach firsthand, uncomfortably aware that he was leaving his neck unguarded. Neither of the orderlies moved, though, and he stared at his skin with his own eyes, as though it belonged to a stranger.

Two missions before the Tanker he had been en route to the exit, camera footage in hand, when everything had gone wrong. For an unknown reason the patrols had changed half an hour early, and he had run right into a pack of soldiers. One had ripped a knife across his stomach just under the left side of his ribcage, narrowly missed directly impaling his kidney and spleen, either one of which would have meant death. He had made it out somehow, knocked half the party out with a stun grenade and tranqed the other half to crawl out and collapse on the facility's doorstep. Mostly what he remembered of the direct aftermath was Otacon's eyes, remembered staring at them while the engineer frantically tried to stop the bleeding, thinking he'd never seen anything that colour before, almost the colour of starlight in the clear Alaskan sky. He had lived, Otacon changing the bandages daily with long narrow fingers, fussing over the wound with antiseptics and antibiotics, resting cool fingertips against Snake's forehead at night when he thought the soldier was sleeping. The wound had healed up, leaving behind a very obvious scar, which Otacon said he could use as a dogtag in the event of more clones. As if he didn't have enough identifying scars already. And now, it was gone. There was a sudden shocked emptiness, like looking down at his arm, only to find it missing.

Adrenaline sliced through the shock almost instantly. Icy pins sank into his skin, stabbing deep at the muscles and nerves, heart pumping painful frozen shards through his blood; this was wrong, completely wrong. Fear and uncertainty were flooding up, fingers beginning to claw, back straightening. He pushed it all down, quashed the instinct to jump, forced himself to be calm, not to show surprise. Don't rush in, wait for it. Wait for it.

"There are others, which you can see for yourself when we're sure you're stable enough." Slatt did up the fastenings to the straight jacket again, Snake staring vaguely over his left shoulder, knowing a good doctor would be able to read his eyes. The orderlies backed off.

"My leg," he said abruptly, voice gruff. Slatt blinked. "My left calf. I was shot, a few years ago."

Slatt shrugged and knelt to pull up the hem. Snake waited until his face was as near to his leg as it would get, and jackknifed into the air, bringing his legs up and slamming his feet into the man's chin. He was twisting even as he fell, slamming his shoulders into the wall to knock himself back to his feet, and pushed off the wall like a swimmer to ram his shoulder straight into the taller orderly's chest just below his ribs, winding him. They fell together, the man choking for breath, Snake twisting to break his fall. The second orderly was already almost on him, leaning over to grab his jacket. He kicked his feet up into the man's groin, and then rolled to his knees, eyes flashing towards the door. The first orderly slammed his fist into Snake's head. The lights went out.

TBC


	3. Chapter 2

Dave woke with a dull ringing in his ears, closer to the sound of a car idling several yards away

Time passed in a confused and dizzying series of images and events; colours, sounds and memories bleeding together like a painting being washed down the drain. Sometimes, Dave was vaguely aware of himself, aware of soft, nearly liquid food being spooned into his mouth, of being taken to the toilet like a child, of beige walls and linoleum floors and people all in white. Mostly, white was what he was aware of, white walls, white ceiling, white floor, white clothes. Sometimes, he was awake enough to know he was drugged. Sometimes, he lay and waited for Hal to come home. Sometimes, he didn't know who he was.

Slatt came and talked to him, often, sometimes when he was in his right mind, sometimes when the only thing keeping him alive was his autonomic functions, because he had no idea what breathing _was_. Dave said nothing in these talks; even if he had had enough control to manage speech, instincts were on the same level as breathing, and _never reveal anything to the enemy_ was an instinct.

Slatt painted pictures in his mind while he lay drooling on the floor. A child, afraid of his father, loving his mother, deeply wounded when he was abandoned by her. A young boy with no anchor, no home, no friends, moving from city to city and country to country, a kite in the wind. A boy suffering in a restrictive household where excelling was everything, overshadowed by both his brothers. A teenager whose only interest was fiction and fantasy, unhappy at home, lonely at school, alone. And then the sounds, and the lights, and the medication. And then the voices, and the images, and the fight. And then the institution, his new home.

None of the medications had cured his hallucinations, although they were able to control his violent behaviour. He couldn't live in the real world. But here, in the institution, with people to look after him, he had the life he had always wanted. Fellow patients became his comrades, joined him in his adventures, his "missions." His early life provided the antagonists, and the locations. A two-month stay in Africa birthed Zanzibar Land, and Outer Heaven. A year-long posting in Alaska; Shadow Moses. A few weeks' vacation on the East Coast; a mission on a tanker, on a fake oil-cleaning facility.

He was a director making a film, casting people from his life for the actors, pulling locations from his past, angers and frustrations from his childhood. And through it all, he never had to leave the institution, never worry about the outside world. His family, no longer anything but an antagonism, had long since stopped visiting and moved on with their lives.

Slatt told him all of this, told him again and again, reading from his file like a story book, sitting cross-legged beside him, white all blurring in Snake's unfocused eyes, just a dark pair of lapels joined by a tie, and two crossed strips of fabric above the floor. They went over it, over and over and over again like a cat rolling down a hill in a barrel, dates, people, places, until Snake knew them all, knew them inside outside backwards up the wall. Slatt poured it all into him, filling him with the information like a balloon with water. It was like building a good cover, building the best cover, because the cover was him, David, born August 2nd 1972 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, liked baseball and cowboys as a child, saw Return of the Jedi in theatres, played the ukulele in Music, fell out of a tree and broke his arm when he was twelve. David, who could whistle like a bird and swim like a fish, whose favourite food was curry and rice, who drew pictures ceaselessly in arts and crafts, who loved to watch the snow fall. David, who had never held a gun or taken a life, who had never fought any man named Big Boss, or Revolver Ocelot, or Gray Fox, or Liquid Snake, or Vamp, or Solidus Snake. David, who had never met a man named Hal Emmerich.

He created this second persona within himself, as he did all his covers, hanging it like a suit in the closet of his mind when not needed, bringing it out for inspection when it was. Sometimes, he even wore the suit. But it wasn't him. He would not, could not, ever forget that. He would never doubt it. He _could_ never doubt it.

--

Eventually, Slatt cut the sedatives back, and meaning began to flow back into Dave's world. He noticed that someone had been trimming his beard. He noticed that Slatt had a still-prominent bruise on his chin. He noticed that he was wearing a different jacket than he had been before.

Dave woke up, lucid for the first time in an uncounted number of days, and realised that he missed Hal. The loneliness was a deep aching chasm inside him, something he had never really felt before. Anger, pain, betrayal seemed to be so long ago, far on the other side of Shadow Moses. It didn't matter; wasn't important. He only knew that he missed Hal, so much that his throat was tight with it.

Dave boxed the emotion up quickly, taped it up and hid it away, leaving his mind clear to think. But the memory of the thought remained, and he felt cold. Felt as though he understood something about the engineer he never had before. He sighed and rolled over, loose pants bunching uncomfortably around his knees. This triggered a thought, and he sat up.

Although his comment about the bullet-wound to the leg had been a diversion, it had also been the truth. Two years ago, Revolver Ocelot had shot him in the left leg while he chased the Russian through Washington, bullet passing right through his calf and leaving behind a weeping wound, sealed eventually into a puckering scar. Back steady against the wall, he drew his knees up and began pulling at the material of his pants with his teeth, turning his head away to raise the fabric higher, taking a new hold every inch or two.

It took several minutes, fabric inclined to slip back when let go, but eventually he pulled the hem up into the thick bunch around his knee, baring his shin. He twisted awkwardly, pushing both knees towards the ground like a butterfly drying its wings, ankles straining against the restraints, sharp eyes searching for the wound. They found nothing.

The dark hair of his legs obscured his search somewhat, but the scar should have been large enough to be obvious even through it. He had seen it plenty of times, rubbed the raised flesh with his fingers. He remembered Hal changing the bandages, just as he always had, gray eyes searching anxiously for any sign of infection, carefully cleaning the wound and re-wrapping it with fresh white gauze, fingers warm against Dave's skin. Dave coughed, tried to clear his throat.

The door beeped. He looked up, tried to wash emotion from his face, and was aware that he had not entirely succeeded. He was tired, and hurt, too much so to fall back into the cold tundra of Snake and crush his emotions back to bring more pain later. That dull acceptance was in itself suspicious, but he didn't have the energy to probe it, mind slightly listless.

Slatt's face, his movements, his presence had become familiar without Dave realising it. He was, as ever, holding his folder, face schooled into its usual cheerful expression. He walked in, and was today followed by the orderlies.

"How are you feeling?"

"Fine," answered Dave, before he was sure why he had. But that was part of the persona, wasn't it? David knew Slatt, trusted him, was friends with him.

"Good. Great. I see the drugs have worn off somewhat. Hopefully you feel in a clearer state of mind than before."

Dave didn't answer this, eyes flickering to the orderlies.

"I thought that, since today you might be up for it, we might move to a room more convenient for chatting."

"Sure," said Dave slowly, while his mind began laying out escape plans, compartmentalized his thoughts, setting aside a section to record the layout of the building and another to answer Slatt as appropriate. He didn't fight the orderlies when they stepped forward to take the restraints off his feet, stood along with them.

He was still being sedated, he knew somewhere in the back of his mind. But it had been so long since his mind had been completely free of drugs that he had begun to adjust, hardly noticed the dulling of his senses, or that his vision was spinning slightly, blurry at the edges. He allowed himself to be led out into the hall.

Dave recognized the hall, recognised every door, every tile of the floor as if he _knew it_, and that shocked him badly. He rationalised immediately, knew that Slatt had described the institute to him, knew that he had been taken out of the cell while drugged, dragged to the bathroom, to a different room for meals, another for medical tests. But he had been so sedated that the memories had shifted from his conscious into his subconscious, taken on the appearance of being familiar when they were in reality cold and foreign. That was the only explanation, and must therefore be true.

They walked down the hall and turned right into a large room. His feet seemed to know the way. The room was long but not overly wide, occupied by four long tables, plastic chairs stacked against the walls in towers. There were no windows, walls painted the same beige as the rest of the institute. A chair had been set up on either side of the table closest to them, facing each other. The orderlies led him to one and dropped him into it, turned the chair around and did up the restraints around his ankles again before he had entirely recovered from the trip, then turned the chair around to face the table. They stepped back, but remained standing behind him, one on either side like guardsmen.

Slatt sat in the chair opposite him, and put his folder down on the table. His chair squeaked slightly as he leaned forward, dark eyes watching carefully. "Do you recognise this room, David?"

Dave glanced around once, and saw nothing that he hadn't before. He had been in it before, he was fairly certain. There were paint and glue stains on the tables, evoking in his mind the image of plastic scissors cutting out coloured cardboard paper, of homemade Christmas ornaments and bright, thick finger paint. He crushed those thoughts, and shook his head slightly.

"It's the art room. Arts and crafts is one of your favourite activities."

"Right," he said, and the biting sarcasm didn't entirely come through. He remembered… pictures, in blue ink. Fingers stained blue at the tips. The dry sensation of skin which had been flipping through paper for too long.

"You have quite a talent for portraiture. The staff and myself were always quite impressed. Look." He slipped from his file two thin pieces of paper, slightly worn with age, ratty at the edges, and turned them to sit face up beside each other on the table. They were both portraits, done in ink, in an odd style which outlined features more with shadow than simple lines, so that the figures seemed to be half a part of the background darkness that surrounded them. He recognised them both, traced the lines with his eyes. On the right Meryl, standing turned slightly to the side, Desert Eagle in hand, a sly smile on her lips and in her eyes, in a posture that he recognised as ready for a fight. On the left Raiden, impractical hair blowing in the wind, expression serious and slightly angered, standing strong with a sword in hand. "Do you recognise them?" asked Slatt. Dave looked up at him, eyes narrowed. "You don't have to be secretive. You drew them. And named them." He tapped the bottom of Meryl's picture. The word "Meryl" had been written in a clean, simple hand. "Jack" was in the bottom of the Raiden picture.

"I didn't draw these." He took refuge in sheer impossibility. He had no artistic skill, had never had any training, didn't even remember taking art in school. Not that he had many memories of his young childhood, the further back he went the fewer came to mind.

"I can assure you you did, and many more besides them. Here." Slatt laid out several more pictures. Roy Campbell, face lined with wrinkles, beret perched on the side of his head, smiling kindly. Frank Jaeger, face contracted in pain, half-covered in the cyborg ninja's suit. Liquid, standing proud and sneering, coat flapping in the wind. Sniper Wolf done in very light lines, as if in the middle of a snowstorm, only colour the darkness of her lips, tainted by blood. Metal Gear Rex, a mess of sharp lines and corners, monstrous optical sensors somehow eye-like. Mei Ling, the lines of her face defined by her ink-dark hair, eyes dark and wide with fawn-like innocence. Revolver Ocelot, face half concealed by smoke rising from his ever present Colt Army Action. Vamp, face contorted in hellish fury, bullet hole dark and bleeding in his forehead, leaping while his coat spread, bat-like, behind him. And in each corner, in the same careful hand, in _his_ hand, a name.

Dave looked up. "You're telling me these people aren't real? That they're all figments of my imagination?" he said, managing scepticism this time.

Slatt pursed his lips slightly, a prelude to frowning, Dave found himself knowing without knowing how he knew. "No. Except for the robot, which you created in your mind, they are all 'real people.'" He slid the file open again, pulled out more photos, actual photographs this time, which he lined up on top of the sketches, describing each as he did so. "Roy Campbell," he tapped his finger on the photo of Campbell, decked out in his military regalia, looking sedately at the camera, "an old friend of your father's, who took pity on you as a boy. Frank Jaeger," he tapped the next photo. This was of a hunched man dressed in institute white, curled in upon himself either in fear or cold, face unmistakably Gray Fox's, but with a twist. Where Dave had known a strong, proud soldier he saw here a scared inmate staring at the camera as if it were a danger. "You were friends with him, for a while, here at the institute. He died five years ago, in an accident." Slatt paused, watching him.

"He killed himself," said Dave, reading between the lines. Slatt looked down and tapped the next photo, a young boy with chin-length blond hair and a pleased expression standing in a garden. Dave recognised the face easily enough from his childhood days as the one he had seen in the mirror every morning, although his hair had never been so light. "Your brother, James."

The next photo, bearing an eerie resemblance to that of Gray Fox's, a young woman with a slightly unfocused expression, hair cut short and yet still a mess, cheeks slightly hollow, hands clawed in a grasping motion. "Meryl Silverburg, also a patient here. You and she were friends in the past, but she became more unstable and took a dislike to you. We were forced to put you on different wards."

A photo of a young man with empty eyes and long white hair tied back in a loose pony-tail, skin white under the fluorescent light, looking almost more like a ghost than a human. "Jack Randolph, came to us very young. Also a good friend of yours, after Meryl left. He's on day release now, a very promising case."

There was no photo for Sniper Wolf. "Your brother, James, identified her as an old school teacher, killed in a car accident a year after you left her class. Apparently you started out on the wrong foot, but came to respect her by the end of the year, more than any other teacher you ever had. You had moved by the time she died, and couldn't attend the funeral."

Another photo, a young Chinese girl with a wicked smile and narrowed, cruel eyes, also in institute white. "A girl on your ward, Mei Ling, who you knew for a while. She's been moved to a different ward, as well."

A picture of an older man, long white hair tied neatly behind him, moustache well trimmed, dressed in a well-cut mustard-coloured suit, staring sedately at the camera. "Another friend of your father's, although one you didn't like very much. Apparently he favoured your brothers."

Lastly, he laid a picture down on top of Vamp's sketch, a suave man in a suit, dark hair slicked back, dark eyes staring out from under sharp brows, sitting at a large desk in front of a wall of books. "Dr. Selymes, your first doctor here at the institute. The two of you didn't get along well. After a year, you were removed from his care when it was decided you could make no progress with a doctor you couldn't trust."

Dave stared at the photos. Each was, undoubtedly, the person he knew. And yet, slightly different. The picture of Liquid might have been a photo of himself at that age, although he knew no such picture existed. The four photos of his "fellow inmates" were wrong, but they were also right. The faces, the expressions, were ones he had never seen, sides of their characters completely opposite to those he knew. But… they _were_ them. Faces and features exactly correct. He had no doubt as to that. He looked up to Slatt, who read in his face what he was thinking.

"They're different from how you know them? But David, remember, your memories are not _real_. You saw in them these people, your friends, as you _wanted_ to see them. Frank Jaeger, who lived his life in a horror of persecution, became a brave hero. Meryl Silverburg, an extremely needy kleptomaniac, became strong and independent. Jack Randolph, a boy with no emotions and no interests, became headstrong and outgoing. Mei Ling, dangerous and cruel, at times to psychopathic degrees, became kind and innocent. Meanwhile, your brothers and your doctor, men who you distrusted and feared, became the villains."

"That's ridiculous," Dave spat. The photographs were computer created, or computer altered. His writing forged, from old military records. Their names assembled from his past. It would take work, a huge amount of research and effort, but it was feasible. There were groups out there with that kind of funding, and that kind of interest. The Patriots. Revolver Ocelot. But… he couldn't believe Hal would have sold him to them. To either of them.

"What about Hal? Hal Emmerich? Who's he? My friend from art class? Or my old neighbour from that time when I was 13 and we stayed in the same city for a whole year?" He forged his anger and doubt into strength, used them to fuel his resistance.

"I told you before, there is no Hal Emmerich."

"You said everyone I knew was someone from my past, someone I knew and corrupted. Well, where is he then?"

Slatt sighed, and reached into the file again, withdrew another sheet of paper. He turned it over slowly and put it down on the table directly in front of Snake, laying it over parts of Meryl and Jack's portraits. The picture, done in blue ink like the rest of them, showed a man with dark hair and glasses, light glinting off the frame obscuring one eye. The other was clear and bright, though, and together with the slight upwards curve of thin lips in a secretive smile created an impression of intense trust, and love. It was more exposing than nakedness would have been, bearing the soul rather than the body, revealing Hal's most intimate emotions to a public who shouldn't be seeing them, an audience of voyeurs. Dave gritted his teeth, crushed the impulse to grab the picture and destroy it, fingers clenching in the sleeves of the jacket. He sat quietly, muscles so tense they ached, and stared at the picture of his partner, his lover.

"What the hell is this?" he gritted out, when he could trust himself to speak.

"Another picture, by you. Probably your best, although I'm not a qualified judge. Considering you had no model, it's exceptional."

Snake did snarl then, jerking his head up, eyes away from the table top to stare at Slatt. "Stop fucking around."

Slatt leaned forwards slightly, expression set into one of calm resolve. "I told you already: there is no Hal Emmerich. You created him. The only person in all your imagined world who was actually imagined, because you couldn't find him in this one. You never found anyone to fulfill the role of partner, of lover. No one was right. So you made one up. You gave him a past even more pathetic than your own, so that inferiority wasn't an issue, and so he'd have a reason to need and admire you. You made him weak where you were strong, an introvert when you were an extrovert, but just smart and strong enough that he would be able to support himself and wouldn't weigh you down unduly. And, gradually, you filled out his personality, and in doing so complimented your own. He was capable with electronics and cooking where you weren't. He was open and kind where you wouldn't be. He was quick to trust, and love, where you couldn't be.

"It started out as just a friendship. You needed a partner- every hero does- and so you created him to be that. But as time went on you found a new role to fill, or maybe his developing character made the role, and he became your lover. And he became stronger, and smarter, until he was almost a rival to you. And we know what happens to every one of your rivals, and to everyone you love. They become villains. You loved him, trusted him, _gave_ him too much, and he had no choice but to betray you, according to your own rules, the laws which governed your world. So he did. And you woke up. He betrayed you, and he freed you from your imaginary world. He sacrificed himself to save you, David."

In one smooth, violent motion, Dave stood, hooking his arms on the underside of the table, and threw it over with his momentum. The pictures floated gently to the ground in a silent snow storm. The orderlies grabbed him from behind and shoved him down into the plastic seat, heavy hands on his shoulders. Slatt stood as well, face full of pity.

"What the fuck do you want?" he growled, voice low and dangerous.

"I want to help you, David. I want you to be able to accept reality."

"No you don't. You either want me to tell you something, or you're trying to screw with my head. Either way, it's not going to work, so you might as well just give up."

"Think it through, David. If Hal Emmerich really does exist, he betrayed you. We could have learned from him whatever it is we wanted; we wouldn't need you. And why go to such lengths to 'screw with' you, when we could easily kill you, or render you effectively insane with medication?"

"I don't know! You tell me!" Dave made to step forward, and was jerked back by the hands on his shoulders.

"The answer, David, is that we aren't. For the first time in years, you've truly begun to doubt the world you created. I know it's difficult, but you're on the right track."

Dave snarled wordlessly.

"That's enough for today. Perhaps some reflection will help." Slatt nodded to the orderlies who, sensing Dave's mood, didn't unfasten his feet, but rather half-dragged, half-carried him out of the room. He wasn't surprised when a nurse, accompanied by the orderlies, stopped by soon after with a syringe.

--

Dave remembered Hal. Half awake and half asleep, half lucid and half delirious, his thoughts were part memory and part delusion, scenes bleeding fluidly from one into another like colours in a pool of gasoline.

He remembered: Hal, sitting at his desk, head pillowed on his arms, shoulders tense under the thin fabric of a t-shirt. Hal, looking up at his entrance with dry eyes but a pained, ashamed smile, saying, "I don't know why, but I just missed you." Hal, gray eyes wide with surprise, relaxing after a second into Dave's embrace, head on the soldier's shoulder.

He remembered: Sitting on the couch, flipping channels idly, soldier in him tracking Hal's movements through the house by sound. Listening to the engineer pad into the room behind him, footsteps muffled by the old carpet, jeans shuffling quietly against his legs. Turning to watch the engineer sit down next to him, glasses mysteriously absent, hair mussed. Shifting as Hal dropped his head onto Dave's shoulder, knuckles resting lightly against Dave's elbow, whispering, "I missed you."

He remembered: The door opening, his key still in the lock, Hal standing on the threshold, eyes dark with relief, compassion, love, lust, pulling Dave into the apartment to press his lips tight against his partner's, run them across his cheekbone to hiss "I missed you," in his ear, hot breath making Dave shiver.

He remembered: The grass blowing in the wind, a young crop of hay, green and lush and sweet, swirling in the wind like ocean waves. The old fence, creaking and lurching under him, himself perched awkwardly on the top bar. A hawk circling high in the sky, sandy brown feathers dark against the bright sky. Hal's footsteps behind him, shuffling and slightly uneven, grass swishing against his calves. Hal's arms around his chest, throwing off his balance, pulling him backwards off the fence. His coat flapping in the air as he turned a half rotation, landing above Hal on his hands and knees, grass crushed under his palms, Hal staring up at him with a smile, pale skin framed by dark hair. The sweet, wet smell of the grass, the taste of Hal's skin under his tongue, his partner's voice, soft under the wind, "I missed you."

Dave woke knowing what was wrong.

TBC


	4. Chapter 3

Time passed in a confused and dizzying series of images and events; colours, sounds and memories bleeding together like a painting being washed down the drain

He was sitting against the wall, eyes on the door, when Slatt returned. The doctor was high-stepping just slightly on the padded floor, smile plastered on his face as always, eyes shining behind his glasses. "How are you feeling?"

Snake smiled back, teeth glinting in the fluorescent light, mind cold and sharp. "I figured you'd be back soon. At first, I just assumed you were watching me." He indicated the camera with a flicker of his eyes, Slatt following his glance. "But that's not right, is it?" He watched Slatt, own face carefully schooled to reflect confidence, and danger. Slatt's smile was fading slightly, confusion darkening his eyes. "Whenever I wake up, you arrive. Coincidence?"

"David-"

"I can't believe I didn't catch on earlier. It took a memory to make me realise what was missing. You told me my favourite food was curry. I remember eating, being fed. But _I don't remember any taste_. I haven't tasted or smelled anything since I got here." His eyes narrowed slightly, dark and unreadable under the shadow cast by his thick bangs. "VR can create sights and sounds. With the right stimulus, it can even create feeling, although only strong, general sensations- hard and soft surfaces, for example," he pushed his shoulder against the padded wall, "but not the delicate differentiations fingers are capable of." He shook his hands in their sleeves. "It also can't create scent or taste accurately, so most systems don't bother, because no taste or smell is less startling than the _wrong_ one."

Without dropping Slatt's gaze, he caught a sliver of cheek between his teeth and drove them together, tearing the flesh away from the wall of his mouth. "Which is why this," he spat out a mouthful of bright blood, "has no taste." He could feel the liquid – the blood – filling his mouth, hot and watery and slightly slicker than saliva, but it had no taste, no hint of copper or salt.

Snake pulled himself up against the wall, and looked up at the ceiling. "You can damn well let me out of here; your game won't work anymore." He stood, and waited. Slatt took a step forward, expression worried. And then, the world shifted, grayed out, and dissolved into static, like a television with the cable unplugged. Followed by darkness, thick and silent.

There was warmth, and the plastic smell of running computers. Relief rushed through him like the foam at the head of a wave of adrenaline. This was real.

After the first second of displacement, sensation moved forward from a tiny background prickle to an encompassing overall awareness. He was sitting in a chair, padded back tilted at a 100 degree angle to the seat, wrists and ankles secured to the chair with what felt like the same medical restraints which had been in use in the simulation. He set his teeth and tensed, ready to leap if he got the chance.

The VR helmet was removed, leaving his head cool in the absence of its cocoon of warmth, and he winced in the bright light shining down directly in his face, bright as the midday desert sun. To his left he heard a quiet clank as the helmet was put down on a non-metallic surface, most likely wood. A second later the light immediately above him was turned off, leaving a burning red spot on his retinas. On either side of the ceiling a row of fluorescents were giving off a pale bluish-white light, soft and cool after the scorching centre light. As his eyes adjusted he could make out the dark walls of a small room, colours brightening slowly. To his left on a folding wooden table sat the VR helmet, hooked up to a laptop, the quiet whirr of the fans the only noise his slightly dampened ears could pick up. Sitting in a wheeled desk chair next to the table was Slatt.

He was wearing the same clothing VR-Slatt had – suit, tie and lab coat – although this pocket was not filled with pens but more blatantly with syringes, and his glasses were gone. Apart from that, the only difference was in the man's expression. The doctor in the simulation had worn a perpetual calm, optimistic smile. This one wore a smile as well, but it was a jackal's grin, close, watchful and confident.

"How are you feeling, David?" he asked, with just a hint of mockery. Snake said nothing. "This is disappointing," he added, tapping something on the laptop without looking.

"You don't seem too disappointed," said Snake dryly, tongue slightly clumsy and voice gruff from lack of use. He twisted in the chair slightly, found no give in the bindings. He recognized his jeans as the same pair he'd pulled on an indefinite number of days ago, shirt unfamiliar.

Slatt shrugged, and his smile brightened without becoming any more genuine, face shifting slightly like leaves in the wind. "This way, at least, I get the opportunity to meet you."

"Going to introduce yourself, then?" Snake studied the man, as he had the representation of him, for weapons, and found no immediate sign of them. But his vision hadn't brightened as much as it should have, he could detect no hum from the fluorescent lights or the computer fan, and if he moved too quickly the room spun slightly. The drugs, at least, had been real.

"My name isn't Michael Slatt, I'm not a psychiatrist, and I'm not going to tell you who I'm working for." Slatt sat still, hardly moving, eyes watchful but smooth. He made no movement that would give a hint of his strength, training or coordination, and that suggested danger.

"Glad we got that sorted out," said Snake, slowly putting more and more pressure on the restraints around his wrists, pulling harder and harder until he was pulling with the equivalent of 150 pounds' worth of lift. They didn't give. He exhaled slightly as he relaxed, a tiny ripple of dizziness coming and going. "Are you going to tell me anything, then, or just shoot me? You know you can't put me back in there." He nodded at the helmet.

Slatt paused, looked up at the ceiling, considering. Without looking back at Snake, he began to speak slowly. "Michael Slatt already told you we're not out to kill you."

"_Or_ screw with my head," snarled Snake, tensing again.

Slatt's smile widened slightly. "Well, that was a lie," he said, as if offering a concession. "But there was never an intention to harm you- more than was necessary to ensure compliance. Your partner was wrong there. I'm sure you're familiar with the S3 programme?"

Snake eyes, which had narrowed at the casual mention of Hal, narrowed further. "Yeah," he spat. "An attempt to make a copy of me by forcing a soldier through a situation similar to Shadow Moses."

"The Solid Snake Simulation," said Slatt. "Exactly. It proved to be remarkably successful; although, some have argued, it required an indefensibly huge waste of funds for a relatively tiny result. Nevertheless, the S3 provided the world with a way to make nearly perfect soldiers."

"And...?"

"And, having found a method to create them, it was suddenly realised that there was no method available for … uncreating them."

"I can think of a few," said Snake darkly.

"Well, yes, of course," granted Slatt, hands flipping open for an instant in further concession. "But apart from a bullet to the head- which, I may add, is difficult when that would almost certainly require a soldier of equal calibre to the one targeted- there was no way to … deprogram these soldiers."

"And there still isn't."

"No. But, had it succeeded, the S4- that is, Solid Snake Suppression Simulation- would have eventually made a regular citizen of you, a safe, productive-"

"-controllable-" cut in Snake. Slatt continued as if he hadn't been interrupted.

"-regular member of society. You have been the source of a huge amount of turmoil within- well, within those groups aware of your creation and the goals which lay behind it. It is almost universally agreed that authorising the Les Enfants Terribles Project was a mistake. After the dedication of resources to the S3, resources which proved to be unrecoverable, it was suggested that perhaps what America needed, rather than a process to create new Snakes, was a method by which to decommission the old ones. And, although a bullet to the head might have been the quicker, cheaper option, it was considered by many that perhaps you were owed some consideration."

Snake snorted. "You mean they wanted to screw around with some guinea pigs." He waited for a moment, but Slatt didn't answer, returning instead to typing on his computer. His movements were quick and competent, although Snake's sharp eyes measured the speed and pause between commands, analysed it against his partner's and found it to be significantly reduced. The spark of pride burned painfully, and he turned his mind away from it. "You realise you've given away your employer."

Slatt looked over at him, lips still twitched in a slight smile, light from the laptop's screen a bright shining veil over eyes as he turned. "Have I?"

"The Patriots were behind the S3. They're the only ones with the kind of knowledge and funding you're talking about."

Slatt's smile gave away nothing. Snake met it with one of his own, eyes grim, teeth sharp.

"Fine. Where's Hal, then? And what was all the not-existing crap about?" He was stalling for time, preventing the inevitable terminus they were rolling towards, unstoppable as an avalanche. It didn't mean he couldn't take the opportunity to ask what was really on his mind. He might not be getting many more chances.

Slatt rolled back slightly on his chair, rocking slightly when it hit the table behind him. He crossed his arms and looked up again, resting the back of his head on the top of his chair's back. Clumsy movements, confident execution. An overconfident civilian, or…?

"Mr. Emmerich was an essential part of the S4, and also the most problematic. We needed a way to capture you without your knowledge, or you would have suspected VR from the beginning. In this sense, the S4 was nearly impossible without him. But, he was also its most serious weakness. In all your life, he is the one strong connection which you have maintained. If you were ever released, his existence would be what you looked for to verify your memories. Therefore, the most important goal of the S4 was to make you believe entirely that he did not exist, that he never had, to break the one unforgettable tie to your previous life. And it proved to be the tie we could not break." Slatt straightened and turned to look Snake in the eye. "It's ironic. If you had lived the way you were trained, and never attached yourself, as you should have done, we could have given you a new life. The one exception you made to your training is the reason you will remain a soldier. Hal Emmerich hasn't saved you. He's damned you." The smile disappeared, for just an instant, and Snake saw in the man a flint-sharp flash of _soldier_. Things fell into place. He was a damn good actor. But then, he'd have to be.

"No one asked you," he said flatly, eyes cold. Slatt shrugged easily, lips twitching upwards again, a clown's mask.

"In any case, to answer your first question, he's very close by. Next door, in fact. We were forced to bring him with us to stop him mounting a rescue attempt."

Snake's eyes lightened slightly, but his mind was turning rapidly, caught between fear and anger. "You obviously didn't pay him very well."

"We didn't pay him at all. He didn't comply with our note, and in fact acted completely opposite to instruction. He was told by email that he had been poisoned – an unnamed substance in the milk, which I understand only he drinks – and that you needed to be sent out by 7 the next morning to a point we specified, for the antidote. It wasn't ideal; tranqing you in the street would still have left you with suspicions, but it was infinitely preferable to breaking into your apartment and taking you there. Instead, he drugged you and remained with you in the apartment, presumably either waiting for the poison to take hold, or for it to be proved a false threat. I suppose he did it to keep you from going for the antidote in the event he _had_ been poisoned, but it turned out to be an unfortunate choice when an hour later ten men broke into the apartment while you were out cold. And it provided an unexpectedly clean transition for you, into the S4." Slatt flipped his hands together to rest palm up, as if to give two choices.

Snake ignored the man's theatrics and said nothing, mind replaying the events of that morning for the hundredth time. Hal, skittish and nervous. Hal, trying to act as though everything was normal. Hal, barely taking a sip of his coffee. Hal, wondering if every skip of his heart, every shaking of his hand, was the poison kicking in. Hal, waiting to see if he would die in an hour. There had been no betrayal. Only a poorly considered, selfish, foolish, stupid, _idiotic_ decision. And the painful, bitter knowledge reinforced, that there were things Hal ranked above Snake's life, but his own wasn't one of them.

His reflections were cut off abruptly when Slatt stood, and pulled from behind the syringes in his pocket a thin metal rod with a plastic cap on one end. Slatt removed the cap, and the blade of the scalpel shone dully in the poor light. Snake stared at him with hard eyes. Slatt's clown's smile did not slip.

"I think that's enough exposition. You've got the answers to your questions, so you have no reason to go digging for them. You have plenty of powerful enemies already, and the failure of this simulation won't have changed that. Don't go looking for more."

"Trying to save face?"

"Your future actions won't affect me at all. I have nothing to lose or gain through them. Just call this… some advice. From your doctor." He bent down, slightly, eyes locked on Snake's the whole time, and put the scalpel in the soldier's hand.

"Right," said Snake sceptically, fingers wrapped securely around the thin metal of the blade's handle. Slatt turned to go, hand on the doorknob after only a step. "Slatt."

The man turned slightly.

"The pictures- the drawings. Where did they come from?"

"You think with all the funding we have, we couldn't dig up some starving idealist artist?"

Snake relaxed, slightly, a tight spring somewhere inside loosening slightly. Slatt paused, and turned around further. "It is interesting, though. Your reaction to some of the pictures was stronger than I would have expected. Made me take a second look." He reached into his coat, and from a pocket pulled a folded piece of paper. Unfolding it, he stepped back into the room and held it up, sharp folds casting rectangular shadows on the page. It was the picture of Hal. But, at the same time, it wasn't. The basic outline was there, strong lines of his cheekbones and jaw traced out accurately, dark hair in its usual fly-away style. But the expression on his face held no intensity, almost no emotion, as though it had been copied from a photo and the vivacity of life had not made the transition. There was no hint of a smile, no light in the lines of the eye. And, above all, there was no love behind the cold ink.

"Different than you remember?" Slatt's eyes twinkled. "Maybe you saw what you wanted to, rather than what was there. I'd be careful of that." He dropped the paper, white page floating to the ground with the grace of a snowflake, and was gone before it had landed on the floor. Snake snarled, and began to saw at the restraint with his scalpel.

It took him slightly more than a minute to slice through the thick leather, and after that another two to undo the other three restraints, the buckles being large and unwieldy, and the attempt not being aided by the clumsiness of his drugged fingers. As soon as the last restraint fell away from his ankle he was swinging himself out of the chair, overbalancing slightly before finding his centre, adjusting to the mixed interpretation of signals from his foggy brain.

Even as he caught his balance he was looking around, trying to draw information from the room. It had clearly been vacant for a considerable time before its current use, judging by the layers of dust on the floor, walls and ceiling, and the spindly cobwebs stretched across grimy corners. Equally, it had been ill cared for before that, edges of the linoleum floor chipping away, paint peeling away from the bottoms of the walls, the room overall dirty and stained by long years of use with little cleaning. And, for such an apparently ignored room, the door was exceedingly strong.

Snake turned to his left to examine the computer. The screen was displaying the desktop, cluttered with a range of icons far in excess of those Hal ever kept on any of his computers. A mouse had been plugged in to the side to augment the touchpad. He reached for it, fingers an inch away, when something in the back of the computer gave a soft popping noise, and a small cloud of black smoke rose up. There was a smell of acrid smoke and melting plastic. The computer screen went black immediately. Snake stared at the mouse for a second, and then grabbed the laptop, swivelled it around to stare at the back. Beside the many hook-ups for the VR helmet was a patch of burnt plastic, the black of the laptop's casing an even darker shade, case melted into a pattern of waves and bubbles by a sudden burst of extreme heat. He tapped it gently with a finger, and pulled it away immediately when he felt the searing temperature still held by the plastic. Hal would not be impressed.

_Hal_.

Snake turned, scalpel held tightly in his right hand, and slipped over to the door. As expected, it was unlocked. He turned the knob, back pressed against the cold cement wall next to the door, and then pulled it open. The hall outside was long and silent, filled vaguely with the cool scent of musty concrete. Snake paused in the doorway, eyes narrowing as a sense of familiarity washed over him, the wave so strong he felt almost carried away.

The hallway was familiar, intensely familiar, without having any real memories attached to it. It did, though, have a set of false memories linked to it; those of the VR world. This hallway was the one his room had let out onto, the position of this empty room the same as the padded one in the fake world. His sense of familiarity ran deeper than that, though, without his knowing how. He knew each doorway, each chipped floor tile, each vent opening just as well as he knew the strength in his hand, the accuracy of his aim. Things he had known without thought, for as long as he could remember.

Hissing quietly, he closed his eyes and reached out with a hand, gripped the concrete frame of the door hard, cold seeping into his skin, surface of the wall uneven and gritty under his fingers. They were screwing with his head, his mind, somehow even now out of VR; something must have remained, subconscious, waiting to ambush him. Slatt's quiet whispering came back to him, ideas and memories slithering in through his ear to wrap around his mind. Was such subconscious influencing possible, in either VR or the real world? Maybe with words and phrases, but images? He raised his left thumb to his mouth, tore a strip of skin from next to his nail and sucked at the reassuring salty blood which flowed for a minute. Whatever was happening, this was still real.

Opening his eyes again, face set to a stony blank, he drifted out into the silence of the hall, straining his ears, frowning slightly at the dim thrumming at the edges of his senses. Forcing himself to focus intensely on the situation, as he was now, he could recognise that the hallway was not _exactly_ the same as the one in VR. The false one had shone quietly, cleaned daily so that the floor reflected the lights, and the white walls sparkled. The reality, though, was darker, again covered in layers of dust. It was stained with years of disuse followed by years of abandonment, the paint peeling; tiles chipped and cracking. There were trails in the dust, the comings and goings of Slatt and whoever else had been working with him, but no other sign of habitation. The building was, almost certainly, abandoned.

There was a door on either side of the one he had exited from, he knew before he looked. He had the impression that they were copies of the one he had just exited, but refused to trust that idea. However, he remembered, truly remembered, Slatt glancing to the right when mentioning Hal. It was as much a hint as anything. Assuming he was telling the truth. Assuming he wasn't screwing with Snake further, a big assumption.

The doorknob was cold under his hand, metal slightly dented. Holding the scalpel at chest height, he threw the door open and lunged inside, senses stretched to their limits, eyes narrowed and focused as sharply as his drugged state allowed. And paused.

The set up of this room was exactly the same as the one he had been in. Two chairs, a table, a laptop, VR system set up and running, the same smell of dust. And, strapped into the chair, body limp and listless, Hal Emmerich.

Questions of reality and mental surety abruptly took a back seat as he stepped over quickly to the laptop, shutting the door quietly behind him after a quick turn of the knob made sure it was not locked.

The laptop screen displayed the three dimensional setting which Hal was currently experiencing, as well as providing a side bar detailing his physiological readings and rough reactions to the scenario. Snake checked these first as he lay his scalpel down on the table next to the computer, noted them to be lower than was the norm, but within acceptable limits. Most likely, his partner's stats were suppressed by drugs, and prolonged exposure to the VR program without interruption. There was, at least, nothing disturbingly wrong with them, no sign of injury or maltreatment. All the same, as Snake watched the screen, he felt his heart twisting.

The scenario into which Hal had been dropped was, as far as he could tell, the same as his own. The engineer was in a padded room, and the third panel which indicated the equipment and items in direct contact with the subject, told that he had been restrained in a straight jacket. He was sitting against the back wall, only half awake, talking to VR-Slatt, who was clearly following the same program as Snake's Slatt, trying to convince him that he was insane. However, unlike Snake, Hal knew for a fact that he was not insane, and in VR. He was answering Slatt's probes with dull, exhausted words, appearing slowly and unevenly on the bottom portion of the screen dedicated to recording conversations.

Slatt: …discuss your past?

Emmerich: Screw off. Or tell me … where Snake is.

Slatt: I can't do that.

Emmerich: (inarticulate vocalization.)

Slatt: Really, I think that talking-

Emmerich: For the hundredth time, you're a goddamn VR simulation… This whole fucking place is a VR simulation… It was yesterday… and it'll still be tomorrow.

Slatt: Well, if this is really what you want to talk about, why do you think so?

Emmerich: …

The stats indicated that Hal had lain down, and his vitals dropped slightly.

Slatt: Hal, we can't get anywhere if we don't communicate.

Emmerich: …

Slatt: Hal, I can't help you if you won't talk to me.

Emmerich: …

Snake snarled. It was perfectly possible to keep a person in VR unwillingly, if the fail-safes and exit mechanisms programmed into almost all systems were overridden; to leave them to rot in an inescapable imaginary world, slowly going mad in the knowledge that they were trapped there, body dying by inches on the outside. Snake had never given the matter much thought before, never given VR much thought before. And he had never realised what a terrifying system VR could be, before. Now, he brought up the program cancellation protocols, used to monitoring the system while Hal trained, or "dived," as the engineer liked to call it. He ordered the program to terminate and shut down, which would release the engineer less abruptly from the system than an unprepared exit.

He clicked the "ok" button with some force, mouse shifting slightly under his grip. The computer seemed to freeze for a moment, and then, with a quiet sizzling pop the screen went black as the back of the casing blew out. A cloud of black smoke rose in the air, lingering for several seconds before diffusing, accompanied by the familiar sharp melting smell. In the chair, Hal jerked suddenly, limbs shaking briefly with the limp heaviness Snake associated with electrocution. He was at his partner's side in an instant, unhooking the straps of the VR helmet with quick fingers. He pulled the helmet off in one sharp movement, tossing it to the side where it landed on the table with a rattling thump. He paid it no further mind.

Hal's face was pale and unshaven, dark stubble thickening but not yet close to a beard. His glasses were gone, incompatible with the helmet, his eyes pressed tightly closed in a wince. Snake knew from experience that being inside a VR simulation when the system shorted out wasn't far from having a stun grenade explode at your feet, the sudden shock leaving ears ringing, eyes blinded and nerves stinging. Although he was taking relatively normal breaths, the thin t-shirt over Hal's chest was quivering in time with his racing heat beat. The pulse at his throat, when Snake pressed his fingertips there, was quick and slightly thready.

"Hal," said Snake quietly, knowing security was breached to high hell, and began pulling at the restraints, leather hard and unyielding beneath his fingers.

Hal shivered quietly and opened his eyes, winced immediately. Snake glanced up, remembered the light in his own room, and slipped over to the door, turning off the first light switch and finding it to be the right one. Hal stopped squinting, looked around with a masked face, although Snake could read the fear there clearly. Hal's gray eyes stopped on his partner, and Snake slipped back across to him.

"Snake?" he asked quietly, eyebrows furrowing. They narrowed further a second later in suspicion, and he looked around again.

"It's not VR," said Snake, and undid the left restraint. "I pulled you out of the system. Besides, you should be able to smell and taste now." He leaned over to undo the right, elbow brushing against Hal's chest. Hal's free hand shot out to rest on Snake's arm, fingers tightening. Snake paused and Hal leaned forward, resting his forehead for on Snake's shoulder. After a second, he heard the engineer sigh, softly.

"Smells like you, all right," Hal raised his head. His face was tired, but he was grinning weakly.

"Ha ha," growled Snake, but the tension in his chest faded. He freed Hal's right arm, and the engineer sat up and bent to pull at the bindings on his right ankle, Snake unfastening the left. "You okay to move?" he asked, shoulder resting against Hal's, conscious of a vague trembling there. He didn't move away, conscious of both their awkwardness, the stinging need for reassurance and closeness offset by the careful coldness the situation required.

"Yeah," answered Hal, voice not as strong as it was when he was healthy, but not so weak to be worrying either. "My head's just kinda fuzzy. Guess the drugs were real."

Snake, finished with the left strap, waited for Hal to get the other and then straightened and backed away. Hal looked around the room again as he stood, and immediately found the computer and drifted over to it, drawn inexorably as iron to a magnet. It only took a second of investigation for him to discover the burnt-out back, and he gave a quiet yelp of dismay. "What the hell did you do?" he asked, turning to Snake, eyes flashing, indignation strengthening him more than days of rest. Snake shrugged.

"It did it to itself, when I told it to pull you out of VR. The other one- the one in my room- blew up too. Can they be salvaged?"

Hal didn't bother to take a second look, just shook his head. "No way. Whoever set this up knew what they were doing. They burnt out the hard drives, and the CPU. All the data's lost."

Snake nodded once, to show he'd heard. He wasn't surprised. He picked up the scalpel from the desk and slipped over to the door again. There was nothing to be gained by lingering. Hal's glasses were sitting on the table near the edge, and the engineer slipped them on. He seemed more distant with them on, as always.

"Where are we?" Hal moved to follow him, keeping slightly behind, arms wrapped tightly around his stomach. His eyes, Snake noted as he turned slightly, were over-dilated behind the clear lenses, dark pupils reflecting Snake's face to him like a shadowed mirror.

"I don't know." Slatt, VR-Slatt, had said somewhere in Baltimore. But he had no reason to believe that, and every reason not to. "You don't remember?"

Hal shook his head. "They got me with a tranq round almost as soon as they broke into the apartment." He paused. "The whole thing was a fiasco," he added in a quieter tone. He tilted his head slightly to face Snake, gray eyes full of regret. "I'm sorry," he said simply.

Snake said nothing, but reached out with his left hand, right holding the scalpel, and grabbed the engineer's shoulder, pulled him into a one-sided hug. Hal's skin was warm under the thin t-shirt, hair smelling of oil and sweat and plastic, and below that Hal's own faint, softer scent. "I missed you," he whispered gruffly in his partner's ear, felt the engineer stiffen against him, then relax. When he pulled away, Hal was smiling faintly, eyes bright as quick-silver. Snake nodded, once.

"Let's get the hell out of here."

--

At the end of the dusty corridor was a wide bay of windows, the stairwell tucked away in a nearby corner. The windows looked out onto a large empty park, tall maples with flame-red leaves, thinner birches and alders covered in bright gold, here and there a dark evergreen. The grass was thick and untidy, speckled with dead branches, fallen leaves and sprigs of pine. The unwelcome warmth of familiarity was washing over him again, skin tingling slightly, eyes narrowed as he leaned on the dusty windowsill staring out the dirty windows. Hal stood slightly behind him, quiet breathing loud in the silent hallway.

"What is it?" the engineer asked, after a minute, voice soft. He shuffled forward to stand beside the soldier, near enough that Snake could feel his warmth in the cool air. Hal took a closer look at the scene, and then turned to watch his partner.

Snake didn't turn, watched the leaves blowing in the wind with a sense of deja-vu so strong it was almost suffocating, thoughts confused and blending together. And, overall, the fear of disconnection, of losing his sense of reality and, deep in his thoughts like a silver dollar at the bottom of a pond, of losing his mind. He knew this place, knew these trees, remembered staring out at them, knew what they looked like barren and covered in snow, and bare but slowly budding, and bright with green foliage. His memories of the VR scenario were confused but even with drugs aiding temporal distortion, the scenario hadn't covered more than a few weeks. He had never seen this landscape in any season other than fall. And yet, he knew it, knew the smell of the trees and the position of their branches, the depth of the park and the location of a playing court, which he could not see from his current position. He had not gone outside in the VR simulation, that he knew. "It's… familiar," he said at last, hands tight on the softening wooden window frame, chipping paint brittle as burnt paper under his fingers.

"What do you mean? You've been here before?"

He turned to Hal, partner gray and somehow dull in the poor light filtering through the dark clouds and dirty windows, "No," he said immediately, then paused, sighed. "I don't know. It feels like they're still fucking with my head." He pushed the heel of his palm against the bridge of his nose, focused on the pressure there, the slight coolness of his hand. "Does this look familiar to you?"

"No," said Hal without any reflection, and Snake glanced at him. He was looking out the window with a blank face, examining the scenery, but without any hint of recognition.

"What are the chances this could still be VR, that they've developed a system which can duplicate even taste and smell, and fine sensory perception?" He closed his hands tightly on the windowsill, felt the rotting wood begin to give under his fingers, slivers pricking his palms.

"Pretty low. We're years away from that kind of detail. Of course, if this _were_ VR, I would be too, so you'll just have to trust yourself." He turned to Snake, pale eyes shining, smiling softly.

Snake stared back, words stuck in his throat like fish bones. He hadn't believed it, _couldn't_ have believed it while in VR, that Hal might not exist, that his entire life was a lie. It was laughable, that he only started to doubt it now when the man was right in front of him. _There is no Hal Emmerich. You created him. _It was ridiculous. It was beyond ridiculous. Jack had had the same crisis years ago, and he had rebuked him for it then. How could he now be seriously contemplating the idea that his life was a lie? Hal _was_ real. But, if that was reality, what were his memories of this place? "How do I know what's real?" he asked, gruffly, channelled the fear and uncertainty into an interaction he was used to, operative and advisor. Hal saw the change come over the soldier, and it passed over to him like a cloud's shadow over the plains on a windy day, any trace of light-heartedness or amusement replaced by serious contemplation.

"I think…" began Hal slowly, eyes wandering to stare at the park below, considering,

"that maybe I was wrong. If you really are trapped in a VR simulation that you'll never be able to prove, then you'll have to trust others. You'll have to wait for me, or Jack, or Meryl, to get you out." His eyes swept slowly back up, met Snake's again. They were steady and thoughtful, straightforward at a time when nothing made sense and logic was useless and infuriating.

"And if they're all just a figment of my imagination?" he asked, in a cold tone. "If _you're_ just a figment of my imagination?" Every soldier had some philosophy in them, somewhere, and Snake was certainly no exception. He had never thought he would be caught up in the whole existentialist debate though, and certainly not in the middle of a mission.

"That's not really an easy question to answer," said Hal, somewhere between thoughtful and reprimanding. Snake gave him an irritated look. "Well," continued Hal with a slight shrug, "you can sit around waiting for someone to give you a blue pill. Or was it red?" He paused. "Anyway, you can wait for someone to bail you out. You can trust yourself, if you think this is all VR, if you think what your mind's telling you is true, and hope someone will break you out eventually. Or you can trust that I'm real, that your old memories are true – that there is a Hal Emmerich and he's standing right here talking to you. Either way, it's blind trust." Hal smiled, rather crookedly. "And, I guess, that means I know which way you'll choose. Trust yourself, or someone else. Hard choice." He sighed and took off his glasses, began to polish them clumsily on the front of his shirt, giving him an excuse not to meet Snake's eyes. "I don't blame you," he said in a quiet, light-hearted tone.

There was a silent pause. Hal cleaned his glassed. Snake, mouth suddenly dry and heart constricting painfully with each beat, made to reach out to him with a not quite steady hand. He swallowed thinly and dropped his hand, managing a matter-of-fact tone.

"Don't be so melodramatic. I trust you; I trust you with my life all the time." Snake tugged at the hem of his t-shirt, heart only managing to pump one wave of frigid adrenaline through him before he pushed it up in a strong movement. They were there, all of them, dark and pale, wide and thin, raised and puckered. Relief wrapped around him like a blanket, warm and heady. Hal looked over, glasses still wrapped in his own shirt, stared at the scars criss-crossing his partner's torso, at the raised line under his ribs with confusion. Snake dropped the shirt back and grabbed Hal's shoulder in place of it, the engineer looking up at him now, face clear and open without the glasses. His shoulder was warm and tense under Snake's hand, the form narrow and familiar. Snake lent in close, so that their foreheads were almost touching. "I trust you, with everything I have. It's what got me out of there. So don't think I don't." That and love, but it would take more than the high of fading drugs and relief to make him admit as much.

Hal nodded once, eyes wide and star-bright, lips curved just slightly, in an expression Snake recognized with a speeding heart. He made to reach out to Snake and dropped his glasses; they hit the linoleum with a clatter, and he flushed. Snake didn't glance down, instead dropped the scalpel to wrap his free arm around Hal's waist and pull him close in a quick movement. Before the engineer had time to protest Snake had pressed their mouths together decisively, claiming the love he saw there and everything else with starved lips. It took Hal only slightly longer than a second to reciprocate, presumably due to shock at intimacy in a mission-like situation; he wrapped a long hand around Snake's neck and shifted to fit himself more closely against the soldier. Even with his nerves screaming at the danger of it, the embrace was familiar and comfortable, and something more. The engineer's warmth in his arms, Hal's hands on his skin and their mouths hot against each other, filled him with a warmth he wasn't used to missing, and had never really missed before. It was vivid and exhilarating, and filled a deep, aching need.

He moved to find a better balance; Hal made a surprised noise low in his throat and shifted, his foot knocking against something causing him to shift further. Snake released him and he glanced down quickly, cursorily, before returning bright, shining eyes to his partner.

Snake grinned, and retrieved the engineer's glasses for him, scooping up the scalpel at the same time. When he met Hal's eyes again they were calm and steady, and almost business-cold. Almost. He nodded. There would be time to star watch later.

"C'mon, let's go." He handed the glasses back, Hal wrapping long fingers around the cool metal; they were warm and dry as they brushed against Snake's hand.

Snake waited for a return nod and then turned to the stairwell door, and that was that. Hal followed him down, shuffling quietly, fingers on the metal rail making it thrum.

At the bottom, Snake pulled the door open and walked out into the ground floor hallway, scanning carefully as he moved, scalpel a poor weapon in the long open space. Hal trudged along behind him without a word.

He followed his memories to the front door, aware that it was dangerous but unable to see any other path than exploring the entire building for another exit, and that would just be looking for even more trouble.

The front entrance, in the middle of a dark foyer, was dark and mildewed, pale slivers of light shining through the wooden boards nailed to the doors and windows which led to the outside, cutting pale slits in the darkness. Snake padded silently over the floor, surface slightly slippery with dust and grime, the only sound that of Hal shuffling. The place reminded him of nothing so much as a crypt.

The front doors, boarded up with cheap particleboard, stuck stubbornly for a minute before giving under his weight, creaking open and letting forth a cloud of dust into the dreary day outside. Snake looked out, ready this time for the familiarity of the long cement drive, autumn trees and thick lawn. He walked out onto the porch without flinching, hurrying on down the cement stairs without looking back.

The air outside was cool and fresh, although in the breeze he caught the hint of pollution that suggested a large city. The front lawn was in the same state of disrepair as the back, and there were no traces on the cement drive to suggest recent use, although it would have been difficult to tell in any case. They followed the path, and almost immediately were past the trees and could see the main city some miles beyond, the dirty funnels and factories of Baltimore. Slatt had, then, been telling the truth about at least some things.

"Still look familiar?" asked Hal, bare arms crossed in the cool autumn air.

"Not the city. But the grounds, yes." At the edge of the uncut grass was a low stone wall, only waist height, but more than a foot thick, enclosing the park. Snake walked right past it without looking, eyes focused on the road, the suburban sprawl ahead of them. His mind was busy calculating the best route to take, the nearest transport, the easiest way of procuring cash with none of his own and no tools. Whatever this place was, he wanted nothing more to do with it, just to get the hell out. He paused only when the sound of Hal's shuffling walk disappeared and turned, eyes on the engineer rather than the tall mansion-like building behind him. He was huddled against the biting wind, long dark tendrils of hair wrapping around the pale skin over his neck like vines.

"Look," said Hal, indicating a granite block sitting on a cement platform on the left side of the stone wall.

_L.E.T. Genetics and Research, 1971_ had been carved into the granite in a plain, clean font.

The two men stood, wind whipping their hair around their faces, staring at the block of concrete and polished granite in silence. Snake traced the ornate letters with dark eyes, carving them into his mind.

Finally, he turned to look at Hal, who met his gaze with surprise and uncertainty. Snake looked back at the sign, and the abandoned mansion behind it. In the distance, a jet's white billowing exhaust sliced the blue sky silently in half while the men watched the derelict building below it.

"…What the hell."

Snake knew without looking that they wouldn't find any answers.

END

Note: I quite frankly don't know whether there will be a sequel or not; I don't have one planned but I won't rule out the possibility. If there is one, however, it will be a separate fic, so story-alerting this won't help you much. Thanks.


End file.
